When can you decorate with pink and yellow?? In nature, with flowers. Inside of interior design, this means, clean fresh palettes only if you are combining pink and yellow:
It’s pinky beige and yellowy beige that DO NOT WORK in the same room. I have had many women say to me “Please come and help me pick a beige, I ALWAYS end up with pink on the walls”. Perfect example of this was the Spa Utopia in North Vancouver, where I had a facial this past weekend.
It’s such a fabulous spa, I highly recommend it. And no one but me would probably ever notice this (I am truly splitting hairs here, only because it makes it easier for me to distinguish for you)but I see pink a mile away so I had to share it with you [of course].
See this tile? It’s yellowy, creamy beige, not a spec of the wall colour in it. The wall colour looks mostly brown and warm to everyone. I get it. Every time I’ve been in one of their spa’s I hear women saying. . . “I really want this colour in my living room”. Here’s a closer view:
In the photo the floor tile looks cream and innocuous but it actually is quite yellow. As I’ve said in a previous post, beige is either yellow, green or pink. See the yellow in the ottoman above? That’s how you can tell the wall colour has a red undertone, cause it’s not green is it? Nor is it yellow. My guess is this wall colour is close to Benjamin Moore’s HC-77 Alexandria Beige as shown above.
If it was any lighter, such as HC-48 Bradstreet Beige, it would have really looked bad with the yellow tile. Why? Yellow beige, next to pinky beige looks dirty. If you have ever painted the walls in your house a colour you KNEW looked wrong but couldn’t figure out why? Your new furniture arrived and it looked old? This is one of the reasons why.
By the way the grout had a green undertone (not so obvious in the photo) but it was something close to HC-95 Sag Harbour Gray:
The colour that would have been closer to the tile is HC-26 Monroe Bisque, one of my favourites. (Now we’re talking, it’s a yellowy beige, of course I would like it :)
You can see it now right? If you look at all three of them at once it’s easy. And I’ve given you the most obvious comparison. By the way, I don’t think the whole spa should have matched the tile, (that would have been way too monochromatic) I think the tile could have been a better match to the wall colour.
I have a student in my current colour theory class this semester who was worried I spent too much time talking about beige and the undertones of beige in our first class. However, as a designer and a do-it-yourself homeowner, you must be able to see the difference while the samples are small otherwise it’s too late once your flooring or drapery has been installed.
If you would like to learn the difference so that you can walk into any space and know what is not working and how to fix it, become a True Colour Expert by taking one of my workshops!
Trick question? What’s the undertone of the sofa in this interior by Jamie Drake? Now you’ll know!
If you would like your home to fill you with happiness every time you walk in, contact me for on-line or in-person decorating and colour.
Related posts:
What everyone should know about Gray
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